The pandemic and its ensuing lockdowns forced Gen Z to miss out on vital experiences as they spent almost two years of college and/or high school shuttered at home. They were robbed of the closure of graduation ceremonies, the fun of college parties, and the hands-on experience of internships and first jobs. But they still had to go to work.
Even that was an unexpectedly big letdown as the same lockdowns wound up dramatically hurting their soft skills. The excitement of a first day at work was quickly tempered for recent graduates when, instead of going to a ritzy office bustling with employees, they found themselves stuck in their childhood bedroom talking to a bunch of floating heads on Zoom. Thanks to remote work, instead of navigating the time-honored tradition of making new friends at work, they probably hung out with their parents more than any young person eager to enter the early stages of adulthood would have liked. The Big Four consulting firms see an emerging market in training Gen Z with proper workplace etiquette.
Deloitte and PwC already offer specialized training for Gen Z workers, and now KPMG’s U.K. office has become the latest to add specialized training for pandemic-era graduates, The Telegraph reports. KPMG has a similar program in the U.S., as previously reported in the Wall Street Journal.
EY, the other member of the Big Four consulting firms, told Fortune it offers soft skills training for employees including “non-verbal communication, storytelling and presentation skills, as well as leadership skills tailored for hybrid working.”
‘It’s hard to imagine’
KPMG U.K. CEO Jon Holt tells Fortune he’s deeply sympathetic: “If I think back to my own time at the University of Nottingham it’s hard to imagine how my experiences—including the friendships I formed—might have been affected by lockdowns,” Holt wrote in an emailed statement. “I admire their resilience, and it’s important that as a business we support them as they begin their training and careers with us. This includes offering additional courses to help them build soft skills.”
The consulting firm will offer special classes on soft skills for incoming campus hires. The classes include foundational skills such as teamwork, giving presentations, and effective face-to-face communication. In short, everything that people (used to) learn by osmosis during the earliest stages of their career. KPMG expects to hire about 1,500 graduates in the U.K. this year, a spokesperson told Fortune.
Despite being the first truly digitally native generation, Gen Z’s inexperience makes them afraid of “look[ing] dumb at work,” writes Fortune’s Chris Morris. So while they’re comfortable using digital tools to put together a slide deck or build an Excel spreadsheet, their major concern is having to present that work to others and the possibility of negative feedback, even if it’s constructive.
This new, specialized training program is in keeping with KPMG’s reputation as a workplace that prioritizes the professional development of its employees. When it was included in Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list in April, 93% of employees said they’d received training and development opportunities over the course of the past year.
Campus hires in the new Gen Z–specific training will be required to attend onboarding sessions in person and work from KPMG’s London office at least three days a week, according to a spokesperson. KPMG isn’t alone in believing that new hires (at any level) perform better with at least some in-office time. Facebook and Salesforce made similar claims earlier this year, saying they had hard data that proves people who joined the company in a hybrid capacity, even if they later transitioned to remote work, performed better than those who were onboarded in a fully remote environment.
Helping junior employees feel supported can go a long way in recruiting Gen Z, who report the highest levels of mental health struggles of any age group, according to a study from McKinsey. KPMG has about 7,200 employees under the age of 25, according to data previously shared with Fortune.
Some universities are also taking it upon themselves to urge employers to provide specific guidance to recent graduates for things that may have been previously overlooked, like what to wear and where to get lunch.
Skeptics of these new accommodations might want to consider that even U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy brought attention to the especially devastating effects pandemic lockdowns had on young people. “The pandemic era’s…forced physical distancing from loved ones, friends, and communities have exacerbated the unprecedented stresses young people already faced,” he wrote in an advisory note in 2021. He went on to call the challenges young people face “unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate.”
Update, July 11, 2023: This article has been updated with a comment from EY.
